Targa Trophy 2013 OC Event #2 at Lamborghini Newport Beach

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With summer almost here in sunny Southern California, the Targa Trophy team had a very special event to get everyone hyped up for the coming season.  Event #2 Italian Car Festival Orange County was held at our Newport Beach showroom which worked perfectly for the amount of cars and fans that were there to show their love for the finer things in life.

Makes and models from various European-based manufactures were there to show pride.  From the German bloodline came Mercedes', BMW's, Audi's, & Porsche's.  The Italian exotics were not shy either with all kinds of Lamborghini's, Ferrari's, & Maserati's proudly representing the boot-shaped country.  A Range Rover and even a few Aston Martin's also sprinkled the parking lot.  A handful of GT-R's, an Evo and even an IS-F seamlessly blended their Asian blood into the European-based crowd with ease.

But don't worry, in case you prefer the brute-force of American cubic inches, a Corvette ZR1, Camaro SS, and a highly-modified Chrysler 300 with a blower peeping through the hood had you covered as their low-rumbling V8's were hard to dismiss.  As we asked the owner of the 300 what was done to make his 300 sound like a 9-second drag monster, he responded: "It's just easier if you ask what hasn't been done."  That's when we knew this thing was more serious than we anticipated… as if the stripped interior, roll cage, front racing seats, and lack of rear seats wasn't a big enough clue.

While most were enjoying themselves in the company of the finest automobiles to be produced, the Targa Trophy team and girls were scurrying around making sure the event went as flawless as possible.  Despite running at 100mph, the girls were still able to smile and enjoy themselves while tending the herd of people ready for their gift bags containing goodies from Targa Trophy sponsors.

As everyone knows, hungry people turn to angry people so a food truck was responsible for keeping the stomach's quiet.  Equipped with a mixer and laptop, DJ Esquire did a fine job keeping the good vibes floating as well.  Something we didn't expect to find at a car event was an artist who was making automotive-based art pieces.  We're not sure what media he was working with, but whatever he was using looked very unique.  We simply had to snap a photo of him doing his thing.

What we read in magazines is always a comparison of X-brand vs. Y-brand.   In real life, the cars while simply sitting next to each other, almost take on the same role. Ferrari's sitting next to Lamborghini's, AMG's next to M's... which is also next to an RS-line Audi, a Porsche GT3RS sitting with it's rear facing a McLaren, etc etc.  As an automotive-enthusiast it's great to see these cars side-by-side so that one can draw their own conclusion of which fits their taste instead of being swayed by the magazine editor's opinions.  Below are a few examples of what we mean by such circumstances.

With the heat slowly cranking up, the participants started applying their Targa Trophy graphics and fixating their GoPro's on their vehicles to capture the experience.

GoPro's mounted, stickers sticked, & temperature rising, it was time to get the Driver's Meeting under way.  As participants flocked inside our showroom, Targa Trophy producer Jason was sure to let everyone know what was expected of them in the run.

With the routes now in the hands of the participants, teams begun strategizing where and how they were going to win.

The moment that everyone has been waiting for was drawing very close.  Cars starting and photographers snapping, the time to get the Targa Trophy Event #2 initiated brought the adrenaline glands from idle to full throttle in .5 seconds flat.

With the official start of the event, spectators were going haywire as a chaotic pool of V8's, V10's, & V12's drowned the ears and pounded the chest from the exhaust pressure pulses.  The rest as you know…. is history.

To view more photos, please visit our Flickr: Lamborghini Newport Beach Flickr

Click HERE to watch the time lapse of the entire pack leaving Lamborghini Newport Beach 

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Lamborghini Egoista – Walter De Silva's homage for Lamborghini's 50th anniversary

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An emotional moment in Sant’Agata Bolognese yesterday at the culmination of the gala celebrating Lamborghini's 50th anniversary: Walter De Silva's incredible vehicle made its entry in front of a thousand invitees, the Head of Design for the Volkswagen Group's homage to celebrating the House of the Raging Bull's half century. “I am very attached to this Italian brand, being an Italian myself. I wanted to pay homage to and think up a vehicle to underline the fact that Lamborghinis have always been made with passion, and with the heart more than the head,” said an emotional De Silva.

Indeed the Egoista, as the vehicle has been christened, is a car forged from a passion for innovation and alternative solutions, the same passion which has always set the Lamborghini brand apart. “This is a car made for one person only, to allow them to have fun and express their personality to the maximum. It is designed purely for hyper-sophisticated people who want only the most extreme and special things in the world. It represents hedonism taken to the extreme, it is a car without compromises, in a word: egoista (selfish),” De Silva further explained. The supercar's debut was equally spectacular, with a cinematic entry announced by a trailer projected onto the nine big screens in the room. The stage was transformed into a landing strip, with a top model in a flight suit guiding the Egoista's arrival with ground crew light paddles, and the roar of the V10 engine shaking the 20-meter-tall tensioned event structure: this is the spectacle the VIP guests were treated to when Lamborghini President and CEO Stephan Winkelmann entered at the wheel of the Egoista, before inviting its creator, Walter De Silva, to join him on stage.

Powered by a 5.2-liter V10 engine supplying it with 600 horsepower, the Lamborghini Egoista is an intentionally extreme and unusual vehicle with absolutely unique characteristics, created by the Volkswagen Group design team – Alessandro Dambrosio responsible for the exterior and Stefan Sielaff for the interior, in particular. De Silva's team chose to create a single-seater, pushing all the characteristics in Lamborghini's make-up meaning pure driving pleasure, performance and style beyond their limits. The cockpit, designed like a tailor-made suit for the driver, is a removable section which, once combined with the rest of the vehicle, creates a perfect technical, mechanical and aerodynamic unit. Inspiration, as per Lamborghini tradition, once again comes from the world of aviation, and in particular the Apache helicopter, where the cockpit can be ejected in an emergency. 

“The cockpit, made completely of carbon fiber and aluminum, represents a sort of survival cell, allowing the driver to isolate and protect themselves from external elements,” De Silva explained.“We kept an eye on the future when designing the Egoista, with the idea that its cockpit could have been taken from a jet aircraft and integrated into a road vehicle, to provide a different travel option.”
The exterior is characterized by two fundamental aspects: its architecture, and the materials used. The design is determined by a highly muscular structure, in which empty and solid areas fit together with strength and vigor. The bodywork is dominated, on its sides, by the stylized profile of a bull preparing to charge, its horns lowered. The bull is driving towards the front wheels, conferring a futuristic dynamism and lines which are already, in themselves, highly aggressive. Naturally, this is a homage, a bold stylistic citation which can only be a reworking of the Lamborghini brand icon, the well-known raging bull. The challenge of efficiently inserting the Lamborghini symbol as an integral part of the bodywork was met courageously and artistically. The plan view reveals a trimaran profile, where the central hull forms a unique section with the cockpit, underlined by the carbon-fiber cover on the front hood.

The upper part of the vehicle does not have aerodynamic appendages, but rather flaps integrated in the bodywork profile which act automatically depending on the driving conditions. Two rear flaps activate automatically at high speeds to increase stability, while a series of air intakes on the back of the engine hood provides the cooling air flow to the powerful V10 power plant. While the front of the vehicle has a profile intended to increase downforce, the rear is fully open with the mechanics in view, reducing weight but also with the result of creating a more aggressive look. The Lamborghini Egoista's lights are more like an aircraft's than a road vehicle's. It does not have traditional headlights, rather LED clearance lights which determine its position not just on a single plane such as the road, but rather in three dimensions, as is required in airspace. Two white front lights, two red rear lights, a red flashing light in the upper part of the tail, two orange bull's ey es as side markers, and a further two lights on the roof, red on the left and green on the right, make this four-wheeled UFO unique even in the dark. Finally, hidden behind the front air intakes at the base of the join between the central body and the two side sections, are two powerful xenon headlamps, two eagle's eyes able to scan the darkness for great distances. As it is made from lightweight materials such as aluminum and carbon-fiber, the vehicle has no-walk zones, duly marked like on airliners. The parallels with the world of aeronautics do not end here, however, as the body is made from a special antiradar material, and the glass is anti-glare with an orange gradation. The rims are also made from antiradar material, flat and rough, embellished with carbon-fiber plates to improve their aerodynamics.

The cockpit's interior is extremely rational, its functionality taken to the extreme. There is a racing seat with a four-point seatbelt, each strip a different color, the airbags, and the bare minimum of instruments. The focal point of these is a head-up display, typical of jet fighters. To get out of the vehicle, the driver must remove the steering wheel and rest it on the dashboard, open the dome with an electronic command, stand up in their seat, sit down on a precise point of the left-hand bodywork, then swivel their legs 180 degrees from the inside of the cockpit to the outside of the vehicle. At this point they can set their feet down and stand up. Even in getting out of the vehicle, the Lamborghini Egoista requires a pilot more than a driver, a real top gun.

The Egoista contains, in Walter De Silva's opinion, all the product criteria which are part of Lamborghini's make-up. “It's as if Ferruccio Lamborghini were saying: I'm going to put the engine in the back, I don't want a passenger. I want it for myself, and I want it as I imagine it to be. It is a fanatical vehicle, Egoista fits it well.”

If Lamborghinis are cars for the few, this one goes further. It is a car for itself, a gift from Lamborghini to Lamborghini, resplendent in its solitude. The Egoista is pure emotion, Never Never Land, which no one can ever possess, and which will always remain a dream, for everyone.

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Design the graphics for the Lamborghini Newport Beach Competizione race car.

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Lamborghini's one-make racing series, Super Trofeo, is making it's United States debut  in June as one, if not the fastest, one-make racing series in the world.  All drivers and race-teams get an an equally equipped Lamborghini Gallardo's sporting 570hp V-10 with All-Wheel-Drive.

Lamborghini Newport Beach was provided with a white Super Trofeo (that IS available to be purchased) and want to know how YOU would design your very own Super Trofeo.  We invite you to have fun and be able to express what you think a Lamborghini race car should look like.  Post your designs on our Facebook wall: https://www.facebook.com/LamborghiniNB

Here is a link to the car without any graphics, an entirely blank canvas for you to experiment with: Flickr Super Trofeo Blank Canvas

Here's a quick render of one of our designs we have just to give you an idea.

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Lamborghini 50th Anniversary Grand Tour starts: 350 supercars from all over the world celebrating ‘Made in Italy’

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Four out of ten participating cars historic models, with 29 countries represented from Canada to New Zealand.






The inaugural dinner organised in the Hangar Bicocca at Pirelli headquarters to seal a continuous bond going back five decades. 

Milan/Sant’Agata Bolognese, 7th May 2013 - Setting off from Piazza Castello in Milan starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow, 8th May, the Lamborghini 50th Anniversary Grand Tour is the largest gathering ever of cars from the “House of the Raging Bull”, organised to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary: a convoy of some 4 km long and 190,000 hp on the road. 


The 350 cars (320 registered participants and approximately 30 courtesy cars for the press and guests) are now arriving in the parc fermè at Piazza Castello in front of the Sforzesco Castle, with their respective pilots and co-pilots totalling 700 people. Since last night, fans and enthusiasts have witnessed the unloading of the cars arriving from overseas and, as of this morning, the registration and entrance to the parc fermè of those driving to the first meeting point.

The press conference to announce the start of the Grand Tour was held this morning at the Pirelli Foundation, to highlight the partnership between the two companies since 1963, the year Lamborghini was founded.

A photograph of the 350 participating Lamborghinis shows 29 different countries of origin of the participants, who have travelled to Italy to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the company based in Emilia Romagna.

The most substantial representation of participants in the Lamborghini Grand Tour is from the United Kingdom with 71 cars followed by Italy, Germany and Switzerland with over 30 participants each. In addition, there are 21 cars with plates from the USA and 17 from China. The other countries represented are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Principato di Monaco, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Tunisia, Ukraine.

The youngest driver was born in 1991 and hails from Kuwait, while the oldest is 75 and is a French national.

Historic Lamborghini cars on tour include three 350 GTs, five 400 GTs, seventeen Miuras, eight Espadas, two Jaramas, six Urracos, 15 Countachs, one LM 002, 21 Diablos and 36 Murcielagos. The record for number of cars participating goes to the Gallardo, the most successful Lamborghini model of all time, with 123 cars registered amongst the participants.

“For 50 years, Lamborghini has been the object of dreams and the symbol of Made in Italy. Our supersports cars are always on the edge of the most advanced technological innovation and for this reason the claim that we have set for our anniversary is ‘100 years of innovation in half the time’. Since our founder Ferruccio Lamborghini first founded the company, a characteristic inherent in our DNA is to address the challenge and not overcome it, but to push boundaries to achieve something even more extraordinary,” said Stephan Winkelmann, President and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini. "The 50th Anniversary Grand Tour, with more than 700 participants representing 29 countries, is evidence of the global dimension our brand enjoys today, and the strength of the Lamborghini myth that continues to grow.”

The first destination of the Lamborghini Grand Tour will be Bobbio, the soul of the Trebbia Valley, then the first day will be concluded in Forte dei Marmi, one of the most exclusive seaside resorts on the Tyrrhenian coast.

After Forte dei Marmi, the convoy will arrive on May 9 in Rome, passing through the base of the 4° Stormo of Air Force at Grosseto. The morning of May 10 it will restart again in the direction of Bologna, crossing the towns of Orvieto, Arezzo and San Giustino Valdarno, where all participants will stop for lunch at the Tenuta il Bobbio.

On the 10th evening, the cars will arrive in the center of Bologna, where the city will offer a welcome in the prestigious setting of Palazzo Re Enzo. The next morning in Piazza Maggiore the ‘Concorso di Eleganza Lamborghini 50° Anniversario’ will be held, which is open to all the historic cars participating in the tour, from the first 350 GT up to the latest Countach model.

On the 11th, the Tour will end in Sant'Agata Bolognese, headquarters of the House of the Raging Bull, where a gala dinner celebrating the Lamborghini 50th Anniversary will be held.

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Supercar Show at Lamborghini Newport Beach May 2013

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Very much like the last Supercar Show we held back in March, Saturday May 4th proved to be a perfect day to stretch the legs of exotics.  With the sun shining and light breeze keeping the temperatures down, the collection of V8's, V10's, and V12's kept the ears on edge.  Although the Cars & Coffee Irvine event was not scheduled to go on, the turn out was still quite well all things considered.

As a typical Southern California car meet, makes and models from a various assortment of brands were there to show their colors.  Ranging from a Ferrari F40 to a Carrera GT, a handful of Aventador's, Ferrari's, Porsche's, McLaren's, Lamborghini's, and even Aston's were sitting primed for beauty photos with wheels cleaned and shiny exhaust tips.  A Ford GT and an all original 427 Cobra were also in attendance to show the German and Italian's how America does speed.

Matt Farah, General Manager from Gotham Dream Car (known from popular Youtube channels such as Drive, The Smoking Tire, and Tuned) stopped by to offer 1 lucky winner an experience of a lifetime through Gotham Dream Car.  A "Dream Car Tour" was raffled off which gives you a 3-hour ride with 6 different supercars that you'll remember for years to come.  A big thanks for Matt and team for supporting us and stopping by.

For more photos of the event, please visit our Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/79753790@N07/sets/72157633436439752/

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